The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

The government has completed the entire process to do away with interviews for lower rank jobs. There will be no requirement of interview for Group D,C and B non-gazetted posts in central government.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

I think governments can’t do much.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

The FBI should not be a political body.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Empire and liberty.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

I love being in the United States Senate.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

I don’t write policy for my government.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.